Speaking activities are essential in a communicative approach. Most people agree that students should communicate ever since they start learning English. However, it is really difficult to design genuine communicative tasks for low-level students of English. In this post, I would like to share two communicative tasks for beginners. In the first one, students practise the verb HAVE GOT and in the second one they go shopping for clothes. I hope you like them.
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Speaking activity – HAVE GOT

For this speaking activity, you need two worksheets. Each student needs the following picture:
Second, each student needs to cut the following picture into the pictures.
Each student places four of the machines into their picture (one machine is in the garden, one is at home, one is in the picture and one is at school). They must not show their board to anyone.
Students work in pairs and they try to guess what their partner has placed in the places. They have to ask: “Have you got a computer?” If the answer is YES, they go on. “Have you got the computer in the garden?” If the answer is YES again, the thing is removed from the game. If the answer is NO, students swap roles. Students swap roles every time they answer NO.
The winner is the student who removes the four things from their partner’s plan first.
Students love the game.
You can download the worksheets here in pdf file. Have Got speaking worksheet

Speaking activity – SHOPPING

I had to teach my students how to shop. There was a nice dialogue in the textbook which I turned into a vanishing drill and we learnt it. Then I was looking for a communicative activity where my students would be able to use the phrases. Unfortunately, there was none. So I spent quite a lot of time creating it. I hope you will find it useful.

Print the following worksheet. Students work in pairs and each of them has one half of the worksheet. They must not show their worksheet to their partner and their task is to find out how much they have to pay for the clothes with no price tags. They should use the dialogues in the boxes. Point out that they should use the blue dialogue for the clothes in the blue square and the yellow dialogue for the ones with the yellow background.
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